Putting photos of yourself on the internet is a strange phenomenon born of the digital age in which we now find ourselves.
But cast your mind back only five years, then seven, then ten. It really wasn’t a normal, every day thing to do, in fact if anything it was frowned upon. ‘Oh my god Nicole is so self obsessed, all she does is put photos of herself on Facebook!’
‘Sarah is putting photos of herself up….AGAIN.’
While we cringe some days scrolling through Facebook at the proliferation of some friend’s over-sharing, it is now so commonplace that most pictures wouldn’t warrant a second glance.
I’ve been putting photos of myself online for seven years via a fashion blog I run fulltime. When I started, most of my photos were of a headless lady, because I simply could not bring myself to reveal my identity. And for almost two years, I didn’t have to. There was no real urge for readers to know, and the social climate around it was really the reverse of what it is today: putting your face online was for online dating or people looking for Russian brides.
I saw the tide change about two years into my blogging adventure. It was around 2009 when the following search terms started to appear in my Google analytics. ‘Who is Lady Melbourne,’ ‘What does Lady Melbourne look like?’ ‘Lady Melbourne face.’
I was truly alarmed by these urgings, as bemusing as it is to write this now. These days, putting myself up for scrutiny on the blog is my daily modus operandi. But it was only four years ago that society still allowed a modicum of privacy and wasn’t yet accustomed to the cold digital demand to fess up everything online; to see someone’s face or semi-clad body.
Now, in 2013 we have the phenomena of ‘selfies,’ and with that a growing trend for them to be taken while half naked and pouting. This is generally the domain of teenage girls, desperate for peer approval about everything from their looks to their dress sense.
In a recent article published on The Age, Olymia Nelson wrote: “seeing some of these images can feel too intimate. It’s almost as though we’re peering through a window. Some photos may be of girls showing skin, or girls lying on a bed. Just about all are seeking some sort of approval from their friends. The aim is not to communicate joy but to score a position.”
A lot has also been written of late, on the influence pornography is having on young people’s opinions of themselves, and in turn the effect it has on body image, their sex lives and personal grooming. This is a side effect of the fact that now more than ever, pornography is widely and easily available via the internet. You don’t even have to seek it out these days, if you happen to stumble upon a dubious website you can end up with ‘pop ups’ galore, simple advertising is more often than not overtly sexual and then there are Instagram and Facebook accounts dedicated solely to rating people’s uploaded, semi-nude selfies.
Whether we can blame the prevalence of pornography on this new social dimension is still undecided, but a more salient point, is where will this lead?
If things have changed so dramatically in the last four years, what will young women be uploading in another four?
In the not too distant future, there will be ten years worth of photos of my life on the blog. I see it as a social experiment that will one day produce a thesis. The photos are carefully arranged and portrayed and I have never sought the approval of readers, over the years experiencing crucifying insults that can only be flung from the anonymity that the online realm provides.
But I feel while my curation is still relevant and curious to some, it is part of an internet tide being washed out to sea, only to be replaced by something more sinister.
I’m still left wondering, what more do we want to see?